Thoughts
So this may be me reading my own view into the book, but my impression of The Count of Monte Cristo is that Dumas is criticizing the French
justice system for the exact opposite reason that The Count (the character) criticizes it. That Dumas is satirizing the Frenchman who looks at the justice system and calls for it to be more brutal, by creating The Count, a character who is brutalized at the hands of the French Justice system and responds by saying, ‘this justice system could never be brutal enough for me.’